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So last week, I experimented a bit with cupcakes with my sister. I found a tube of mint flavour and decided to try my hand at a cupcake idea I saw posed on Cupcake Wars on the Food Network. We had originally intended to attempt to make a Mint Hot Chocolate cupcake but in the end, given the lateness of when we started, we simplified it and tested just the mint chocolate cupcake and used Peppermint frosting that I picked up at Christmas time.

We used Devil’s Food cake mix and that was a mistake. Devil’s Food is too strong of a chocolate flavour that it overpowers the mint despite me using the entire tube. You can still taste a bit of the mint but it is barely there. Its more of a mint after taste. Our second mistake was the Peppermint Icing. It is Pillsbury Creamy Supreme Peppermint and it is way too powerful for even the really strong flavour of chocolate in the cupcakes. Its almost like having a really powerful toothpaste as a frosting. We tried to see if we could core the cupcakes instead of frost the top and even that was still pretty strong.

I think on my next attempt of these cupcakes, I will use milk chocolate cake mix (which the mint flavour tube recommends anyway) and I will make my own mint frosting or do a marshmallow frosting if I am really feeling experimental. But overall, the cupcakes are tasty! Just not exactly what we were aiming for.

I am already failing a bit to keep up with this blog. Here s a bit of a catch up for the week.

On Friday, I took Zoe to her wellness check and for some reason she completely flipped out this time. I’m not sure she is a fan of the nurse. As soon as I laid her down to get the measurements, she started to cry and flail and normally she is much better about it all. They measured her length and head circumference and that is when they noticed that her head circumference had changed and jumped up a few lines on the growth scale. To be fair, her 6 month check was with a different doctor and they didn’t measure her head so who knows when the growth size jumped up. But the doctor was concerned by the sudden growth and sent us for a cat scan to be on the safe side.

So from the moment she said “cat scan”, I was trying not to burst into tears. She said that it was probably nothing and that she was just doing this as a precaution, but that didn’t make me feel better. Fortunately they managed to get us into the hospital right away for the cat scan after a minor hiccup with paperwork ended up at the wrong place. We were bounced back between the hospital radiology place and the diagnostic center and after a golf cart ride back to the hospital, we were brought right back to get the scan. It took longer to get ready than the test did. (They have a super fast machine!) They strapped me into a lead vest with neck protector and we laid her down and she was so good… not even a peep. She was watching the technician with interest. The bad part was that the results take 24 hours, go through the doctors office and it was friday.

So I had to wait until monday just to get an all clear and get her shots done. But it was an all clear! No fluid on the brain or anything, she just has a big head like daddy!

That whole thing kind of took it out of me, so this week we are relaxing a bit. We got the dvd boxset of the Harry Potter movies and we’re watching them this week. Its a long marathon and she isn’t really absorbing much. Then again, neither am I. In fact, I seem to get more of my chores done when the movies are on. And we both nap on the living room floor cuddled together on the comforter which is nice. Its been a more relaxed week and so we are having an easier time doing everything. Its even easier putting her to sleep this week! Hopefully we can maintain the calm while Nick is gone!

Well, Nick ended up getting to Houston a day early lol. Wasn’t due until tomorrow. Oh well. He will be well rested when going to work tomorrow.

Zoe is making great strides in her learning things, but she is becoming stubborn and trying to get ahead of herself. She has barely gotten the hang of crawling and she is already moving on to pulling herself up on everything and trying to learn to walk. We literally can not keep her down. And bedtime is a trial now that she can pull herself up in the crib. I laid her down in the crib to go to sleep, and left her drowsy and nearly asleep. All was quiet and so I sneaked down the hall intending to peek into the bedroom only to see her standing in the crib just patiently waiting for me. When I laid her down again and left, she was crying and when it had escalated to hysterical, I went back in and found her standing with one hand on the crib rail and she was hysterically screaming. I finally managed to get her to sleep but it took some doing. And now I am completely exhausted!

I’ve never been very good at writing on this blog but I am going to force myself to sit down and write more often. And so to start it off, I’ve hidden all of my old posts (I think) and I am starting with a clean slate!

I will start off with a recap of one of the best years of my life. In April, I had a beautiful baby girl, Zoe. She is my precious little Browncoat! Yes that is a reference to Firefly… her name was almost Inara but we knew she was a Zoe as soon as we met her! In September, Nick was told that he would be working on a project in Hawaii and would be travelling back and forth every 2 weeks. Since we have a very young baby, they agreed to let Zoe and I go with him. So we lived in Honolulu, Hawaii for 2 months! I have a new found fascination with snorkeling and Zoe loves the beach! And on the day before thanksgiving, we got married on the north shore of Oahu! It was gorgeous and everything came together quite nicely. I got a wedding dress bought and altered in 3 days and the perfect wedding ring! Our trip was really over too quickly. I wish we had spent more time doing the tourist thing though!

We got back to the mainland in the beginning of December, got our Christmas tree, presents and counted down the days until Christmas excitedly. I was more excited about the prospect of making Christmas special for Zoe than I was about Christmases when I was a kid and I was getting all of the presents (very strange indeed!) New Years eve was spent conversing with neighbors, watching stuff on the dvr, playing with Zoe and then we rang in the new year with chocolate pudding with whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles. One of the best New Years I’ve had in a long time!

And now it is time for my yearly resolutions… these are always broken fairly quickly but I do try!

1. I resolve to be more patient as a whole. I find myself getting short tempered with Zoe and Nick, especially when she starts screaming and I am really going to work on taking things in stride and not letting them get to me so much!

2. I resolve to stop being so paranoid about my health. I am a bit of a hypochondriac and I am going to try and curb those tendencies. I am going to bar myself from visiting webmd and worrying about every twinge, pinch and pain that I feel. No more panic attacks for me!

3. I resolve to be more responsible for keeping the house cleanish. I know that it will never be perfect but that will no longer deter me from at least making an effort! I am going to make myself clear the dishes up after meals right away and put the leftovers away! And laundry will be done on time!

4. I resolve to not be neurotic about my weight. Instead of trying to lose weight, I am going to focus on eating healthy, getting a tiny bit of exercising daily and not weigh myself more than once per day. (I would say not more than once per week but I know that will never happen and these are supposed to be realistic!) And also to drink more liquids! I am terrible about liquids!

And most importantly…

5. I vow to spend more time focusing on Zoe and making sure I spend lots of time playing, bonding and teaching her and appreciating how fascinating she is instead of worrying about the house and the like. She is growing up so fast and I don’t want to miss anything!

Hopefully, I will keep up this blog instead of just letting it fall by the wayside again but given my past history, I’m not going to bother making a resolution about it. I always break them and if I keep up with it, then great but if not, I don’t want to feel guilty over it! ( 6. I also resolve to feel less guilt over small stuff!)

I hope everyone had a great holiday season and its back to the grindstone as of bright and early tomorrow morning, so I’ll say goodnight now!